I spiralised all my food for a week

Spiralising, the new trend where every meal seems to end in “etti” is, literally, spiralling out of control.

When I discovered that my parents actually owned a spiraliser, I put Netflix on pause and decided to divert my attention toward something more thrilling, and perhaps also learn some new recipes to cook at uni.

Meet the spiralizer

So I threw myself into the deep end with this fad, doing some food porn research on Instagram.

All the spiralised meals looked pretty amazing, healthy and stylish. I decided to start with something that I knew would be healthy and easy to spiralise.

On day 1, I recreated the “etti” madness with courgette and beetroot. It left my stomach feeling fairly satisfied, whilst leaving my kitchen looking like a crime scene.

Spiralised beetroot with feta and rocket in a balsamic and orange dressing Spiralised courgette with tomatoes, rocket and parmesan in pesto sauce

But being at uni, where pasta would usually be the preferable option, and it’s not realistic to buy a shitload of posh veg, how can this trend be more halls-friendly?

The joy in this photo could fool anyone into believing that vegetables can actually be fun

After the success of creating these meals I felt like perhaps I’d progressed to the semi-final stage of Master Chef, but needed to work on those “Big flavours”

So I decided to spiralise some of the cheapest, most common, freshers foods to see if I could make my uni meals a little more insta-fabulous.

Jelletti

Somewhat successful, although not so appetising… Frogspawn anyone?

Jelletti passed with flying colours.

Slipping through the spiraliser with slimy ease, the jelly formed the perfect spaghetti. Although the strands could have been made firmer if the jelly itself was more set.

My verdict: For me, the fun involved in eating jelly is slurping it off of a spoon- using a fork was foreign. Spiralised vegetables look edgy and appealing, whilst shredded jelly resembles something along the lines of frogspawn.

Perhaps jelletti would add an interesting spin to a trifle, but for now I’d recommend sticking to standard jelly moulds. After all, vodka jelly shots are easier and faster to get down you than vodka jelletti.

Bananetti

Not much success here.

My verdict: The banana was just over ripe, so as you can imagine it turned into a gooey mess when pressured into the spiralizer. But I love banana, and the flavour was made better in its sludgy spaghetti form.

Why not try a Bananetti alternative to banana split? Or simply add a dollop of chocolate sauce, sprinkles maybe, for a sweeter alternative to Spaghetti Bolognese. Student nutrition at its finest.

Cheesetti

Red Leicester, of course

The cheese was softer than I had anticipated which lead to it bending in half rather than passing through the blades. Using rubbery cheese and a handheld spiralizer would definitely work better.

My verdict: I had high expectations for spiralized cheese. Disappointingly, the dream of stripping away pasta as the middle man in macaroni cheese remains a dream. Cheesetti, as pasta on its own, cannot be made. But hey, we still have Cheestrings in our lives.

Sausagetti

Using the finest 99p sausages I could find, I set out to make sausage pasta.

My verdict: Let’s be honest, a lot of the time pasta is used as a bland filler to bulk up a meal. My plate is usually about 20% pasta and 80% tasty stuff. Why waste time on spaghetti, sausagetti would be the perfect solution.

This sounds like an ingenious idea, right? It would be… if it actually worked. As soon as I forced the sausage into the spiralizer the skin peeled off, pulling precious meat away with it. (No, this is not a line from Fifty Shades of Grey).

Some of the meat made its way through the blades to become shreds of what almost resembled spaghetti, but overall the finishing product was not what I had in mind.

The good thing is the sausage meat could be squished back into its sausage form and eaten in a full English breakfast.

Well, it seems you just can’t manhandle a sausage.

Hametti

Spiralizing

Look at that jelly covered ham.

My verdict: Tinned ham spiralled very well. It slotted onto the spinner like a glove, the jelly coat acting as a glistening glue holding it in place. Out came perfect ham spaghetti slices, giving official recognition to the new member of the -etti family, Hametti.

How about a Hametti omelette for lunch tomorrow?

Caketti

There isn’t much to say about Caketti, except that cake is better left without the -etti. Sorry, Mary Berry, I failed you.